Lowering the Political Hero to Our Level

Excerpts from the Paper

The beginning:

Lowering the Political Hero to Our Level
Introduction
Joshua
Meyrowitz
argues that politicians and political life has been increasingly disenchanted and demystified with the prevalence of mass electronic media and communications. While politicians of the print era were made legendary because of their ability to practice and subsequently modify their performances, today, the national politician faces a single audience through radio and television. As a result wherever the politician speaks, he or she is able to address people all over the country; major speeches then cannot be tested in advance and as
Meyrowitz
claims “[b]
ecause
they can be presented only once, they tend to be relatively coarse and
undramatic
” (
Meyrowitz
269)....

The end:

.....rvations, I certainly can discern a sort of “staginess” in the performance of politicians’, especially American politicians. It is logical that the wide dissemination of information made possible by electronic mass media have intensified the need for politicians to abide with rituals.
To summarize,
Meyrowitz
argues that electronic mass media has affected politicians and political life by making available an abundance of information therefore demystifying the politician; by developing political rituals that politicians must conform to; and by moving the private-public event to the public-public event.
Works Cited
Meyrowitz
, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic
Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.